


New Beginnings

by shortitude



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grounder Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 12:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16062968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/pseuds/shortitude
Summary: The first thing that she becomes aware of is how warm the sun actually is. Growing up in space, the centre of the galaxy felt far away and cold, as if it was a mirage or a memory that their ancestors left behind. Movies showed people in the sun, books talked about it from its impact on agriculture to scenarios in which it fizzled out and left the fate of the planet in the hand of seven teenagers. The Ark, with its artificial light and heat and air, could only simulate what children were taught used to be a daily thing on Earth.





	New Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zauberer_sirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/gifts).



> @zauberer_sirin's beautiful prompt said: "Prompt 1: The 100 are sent down to the ground but in batches of people, rather than all at the same time, Bellamy is among the first to go to earth, Raven among the last ones. When she arrives Bellamy is the one who has to show her the ropes on how earth and the Grounders work, he geeks out about both the plants/animals stuff and the bits of earth history he’s discovered (so different from what they teach in the Ark!), while Raven uses her skills to help everybody face the structural challenges of living on the ground, Bellamy admires a lot, they fall in love, etc." 
> 
> I had a fuckton of fun writing this love letter to Raven Reyes. I hope you enjoy.

**1.**

The first thing that she becomes aware of is how warm the sun actually is. Growing up in space, the centre of the galaxy felt far away and cold, as if it was a mirage or a memory that their ancestors left behind. Movies showed people in the sun, books talked about it from its impact on agriculture to scenarios in which it fizzled out and left the fate of the planet in the hand of seven teenagers. The Ark, with its artificial light and heat and air, could only simulate what children were taught used to be a daily thing on Earth.

The funny thing is, she's a woman of science, a genius. She has planned the landing of seventy pods, carrying the population of the Ark back to the ground. She - an unimportant zero-G mechanic - has been last off the ship, metaphorically speaking; true, it wasn't just her in the last pod, but also Sinclair and Kane and the older Griffins, but it doesn't change the fact that she's been getting all tales of the Earth from video calls with the first landers.

So the first thing that hits her is the heat of the sun, cloying and pressing, pressing against every follicle and cell. She stands, frozen in place, with her head tipped back to receive.

Around her, the remaining arkers disembark and set a course for the campsite.

**2.**

They've called it Arkadia. It's a little on the nose, and a little simplistic, but it's okay because she has brought her tools. She might not be able to create high pressure hot showers, but she could invent something clever.

She's distracted by the possibilities when two scouts from the campsite appear ahead on the forest path. The first runs towards the two Griffins - their daughter, she things with a bittersweet taste - while the second makes his way to her.

It's the first time she sees Finn since their long distance breakup, and although it still hurts that he moved on from her so quickly, she welcomes the hug. She's missed her family too.

“You let your hair grow,” she grumbles, displeased, as if the change offends her with more proof of how he's no longer hers.

“Wouldn't really trust Clarke with scissors around it. You know how us artsy types get,” he jokes softly, trying to make light of it. She hasn't forgiven him, deep down, for not loving her enough. But she loves him enough to laugh.

“You know where I'm at if you're tired of looking like Shaggy.”

He pulls away from the hug, and takes her in, and she sees the moment it dawns on him that she's changed, too.

“Raven, what happened?”

She wants to hide her leg, when he says it like that, so loud and surprised and genuine, making everyone look at them.

“There was a beam,” she mutters, self-conscious. She wants to brush it off and say she's fine, but the truth is that her hips and back still reel from the accident, and the brace is a reminder that she is not the same. “Hey at least it happened up there. I got a brace for it that's top quality and meds to handle the pain.”

“When?”

“A month ago.”

A month ago, when Finn told her that he'd met someone, she'd gone to work distraught and sad, and ended up nearly losing her leg for it. She didn't actually lose it, but there's still the fact that she has to use the brace or not walk easily. This is the only thing that's scary about the ground. The fact that she won't be able to help or be useful with a brace.

She doesn't blame him for it. She blames herself for it.

“Raven, I'm -”

“Don't,” she stops him, because she just finished bringing the whole Ark population to the ground; she doesn't want her first victory tainted by remembering she's not enough. She gives Finn a tense smile. “It's fine, it's done. Just show me around.”

**3.**

It's been two weeks since the final landing, and the only thing Raven has gotten used to is the natural progression of days, sunlight and moonlight and nothing artificial in between.

She and Finn don't hang out as much. She's let him know they're still family and she will support him if he needs help, but she notices something three days into being around Finn around Clarke. He becomes a different person around his girlfriend, and it's weird to see it from the outside, and also deeply disturbing. She doesn't recognise him much nowadays, even if she still loves him.

He never asks for a haircut.

**4.**

She gets impatient with not knowing where things are and what things are, so she finds herself doing the unusual and asking for help.

Bellamy Blake is something of a brand name on the Ark. The only brother they've had in centuries, and the first volunteer member of the first pod. He didn't climb ranks once on the ground as much as he -- apparently -- fell into them naturally.

Reports came in early on of negotiations and communication with native tribes, Grounders, which Bellamy soon began to lead.

She can tell why right away, as soon as she sees him around younger Arkers. He is patient, and works hard, and he has the benefit of being pretty enough to make people look twice and listen.

This is how she introduces herself:

“So what's it like to have a sister?”

He looks up from his spot, crouched by the skeleton of a hut, where he is patting wet mud against the wooden structure to provide protection against the elements. His eyebrows are raised, and there's a smudge of mud on his forehead, much like what she gets when she's focused on a project, and he manages to still look like he's looking her up and down even from below.

Whatever he's measuring her up against, she clearly wins, because the next thing she gets is an attractive half smile. “Terrifying and exhausting. Why?”

Raven shrugs. “Just curious.”

Raven remembers when the Blakes story came to light. A few days after Jake Griffin went live with the news that the Ark was dying, engineers and mechanics all put their heads together to fund the project that wound slowly drop all their people onto the inhabitable ground. In the midst of political games and panic, Aurora Blake stood up during a Council meeting to which all people over 18 were invited to attend, and announced that she had a daughter.

Her sentence was light, because what was the point of unnecessary slaughter before everyone else got to escape their space box? Aurora was forced onto the first pod, together with her young daughter. Given the limited possibility of them surviving at all, it was about as merciful as shooting her in the arm and telling her to swim. Her elder son volunteered twenty seconds after the verdict.

They were pioneers now. The first landers. Of course the group had been bigger than the three of them, but nobody failed to notice that Aurora was the only adult in the group. The rest, delinquents from the Skybox offered a lighter sentence option, and - surprising everyone - Clarke Griffin. For whatever reasons; Raven didn't pretend like she cared.

But Bellamy, she likes better, just based on the fact that he hasn't seduced her boyfriend, and has a nice way with people.

“Do you need anything?” he asks, making Raven stand up straight, aware of how pointedly he doesn't look at where her brace creaks.

“Harper said you're the best guide down here. I'm trying to build us a well. Any ideas where I might start with that?”

**5.**

She does it the first, second, fifth time when she needs help. She goes to Bellamy for guidance, because he knows his way around the land and gets her meetings with the Grounders, and slowly Arkadia grows.

Their main point of contact is a man named Lincoln. The first time Raven meets him is on neutral ground, by the lake she is studying; she's explaining to Bellamy her idea of irrigation, gesticulating wildly and probably making enough references to Ancient Rome for him to tune her out, but it gets her excited to have a project. This gives her something to keep her hands busy, so she doesn't think about the fact that Finn barely talks to her anymore, and she's useless to most people because she can't go on scavenging hunts.

She's enough in her world that she doesn't notice the extra audience until Bellamy clears his throat and says, “Raven, this is Lincoln.”

Lincoln towers over them, and looks different but familiar; familiar because he is human and has no extra head from radiation, and different because he grew up in fresh air his whole life and walks like he takes it for granted.

But she can tell that Bellamy likes him, because they share a familiar smirk, as Lincoln holds his hand out.

“Nice to meet you. Why is it that I always find you in the middle of a rant about Ancient Rome?”

Bellamy holds his hands up in surrender, and says, “Hey, it wasn't me this time,” and throws a glance and a quick smile at her that makes Raven blush to her toes.

Predictably, it goes well from there.

Three weeks later, Arkadia has a well, and Lincoln brings with him a envoy of female Grounders that want to take a look and open up trade.

The Council announce the trade agreement as a result of diplomatic negotiations, the effort of their politicians and their guns, but Raven has a map in her pocket and a diary of all the villages she will go to, to build them better wells and showers.

“They're taking credit for Raven's idea,” she hears Bellamy mutter behind her to someone during the meeting. As she glances behind her, she meets the inquisitive gaze of a woman that could only be his mother, whose face she knows from reports.

“Typical,” Aurora Blake says with a smirk, that same familiar smirk, and Raven finds herself pulled along to do the same.

That evening, she is invited to dine with the Blake family.

It's the first family dinner she's had in her life.

**6.**

It’s an informal thing, because after all they all have food in the same common area, but the four of them congregate around a single table, and the conversation flows so easily that Raven forgets that she’s supposed to be terrified because a parent is judging her.

She hasn’t exactly forgotten that Finn’s family never wanted her to come over, and would have preferred it altogether if Finn hadn’t decided to befriend her at all. She hasn’t exactly forgotten about her history with mothers, and their tendency to not like her.

But Aurora likes her. Apparently, that’s what Bellamy thinks and tells her, as he’s walking her to her tent like a well-raised gentleman.

She lets out a panicked little laugh, and looks away. “I’m not that obvious, shut up,” she mutters, rubbing the back of her neck.

“It’s okay, I could read it on your face.” When she gives him a look, he shrugs and says, “You looked like what I felt like when I met Mister Sinclair.”

Raven lets out a little laugh, no panic now; it’s funny that he calls him _Mister_ Sinclair. Mister Sinclair thinks it’s fucking funny, too.

“I promise, Raven,” he adds, more seriously. “Mom doesn’t make friends easily either, and has opinions about most of the people I’ve ever been around, but she actually wanted to meet you? And watching her tonight - you made her smile? Only O has managed that in all of fifteen years.”

Raven lets the conversation die off there, because truth be told she doesn’t know how to handle it, and how to handle herself around it. But it _is_ important, that Aurora liked her.

The walk to her tent is a very brief one, and soon they’re standing there, a few feet apart, looking at each other awkwardly. Raven’s map burns a hole against her leg. Her fingers tingle a little to reach out and maybe, just maybe, take his hand and ask him if he wants to join her.

“Thanks,” she says instead, sticking her hands inside the pockets of her jacket. “For everything. You’ve been...you _are_ really great. I’m glad I came to you for help with this.”

He waves the comment off, unaware of what it means for her to say it. “Please, I did nothing. Just pointed at things and talked about roots and trigedasleng. Honestly, it’s been amazing to watch you work.”

Her heart is, very suddenly in her throat, and she takes a quick breath and braces to say it. _Come with me_. It’s a high demand, and he’ll say no, because his family is here - his mother, his sister - and he has a purpose here, even if the people in high command have been undermining it as much as possible since they, too, have come to the ground. But oh, she wants to pull him along with her, to ask him to teach her trigedasleng as they move from village to village and explore a world they only saw from miles and miles away in space. She opens her mouth, ready to take the chance.

“I could come with you,” Bellamy blurts out first, surprising her.

“Yes,” she answers, without hesitation.

They grin at each other like a couple of self-aware idiots that they are.

“Cool!” she says, for the lack of a better word to express her excitement. She does a little walk in place, too full of energy to contain it in her body now, and in spite of her brain coming up with ten different scenarios to release that energy (with him), she says, “Okay, so I’ll go sleep now.” She points back to her tent with her thumb, like he doesn’t know it’s there.

Bellamy doesn’t look deflated when he nods. Maybe it’s all in her head, and she just needs to separate herself from those ideas.

She points at him, feeling awkward, “Goodnight.” And has an out-of-body experience as she watches herself finger-gun at him goodnight. The only thing to do after that is duck inside her tent, and smack herself across the forehead for being so ridiculous.

Bellamy doesn’t linger outside her tent, or ask if he can come in, and it’s only when he’s left that she realises that she really wanted him to.

 

**7.**

In the first village, Raven eats an apple.

They arrive at dawn with Lincoln and an older Grounder named Indra. Raven can tell that it’s largely because of their presence that Grounders in the village accept them, with reluctance. The Commander has ordered it, and in spite of being days away on foot from the Commander, the Grounders just accept that it must be for a reason, therefore it is important they let these sky people in.

“If we’re sky crew, what are you to yourselves?” she asks Lincoln, while they stand to the side as Indra speaks to the village elder.

Lincoln lets out a small snort, and shifts closer to Raven, so he can murmur, “It’s _Skaikru_ , that’s our word from people from the sky. And to ourselves, it depends on the Clan we belong to. There are twelve in total, but _we_ are _Trigedakru_ , or _Trikru_. I’ll let you guess why.”

She looks around them at the wide, rich, lush green forest, and smiles. That she can guess, yes. Trikru sounds appropriate, and poetic - they were the humans who grew up around trees. They were likely the humans who grew out of survivors of the nuclear warfare, and Raven does love a survival story. There’s a part of her that likes the sound of Skaikru as well; it’s better than Arkers, it gives her a sense of a more mystical origin.

A sudden thought occurs to her, and she looks at Lincoln again. “Is it insulting when we call you Grounders?”

Lincoln looks surprised by the question, but pleasantly so, judging by the small smile that appears at the corners of his lips. Maybe nobody has asked him this before. It seems like a mistake not to have, given that the two sides have been in discussions for seven weeks. Thinking back on it, there is something vile about the way Council members the likes of Shumway and Kane say the word. _Grounders_.

“It can be,” Lincoln says, and for a moment he looks proud of her. “Especially when it’s spoken as an accusation. We did not choose to be born here, and our ancestors certainly did not choose to be abandoned on inhospitable ground. But we persevered. We even thrived.”

“And now you’ve got haughty pieces of shit like us, dropping in on your territory and claiming that we’ve had a right to it all along?” She pauses, tilting her head. “I brought a reader with me. Later tonight while we’re camping, remind me to show you, I’ve got a whole list of books about pre-space race colonialism.”

In the hours that follow, Raven speaks to many people, and makes a point to not call them Grounders. She asks Lincoln to teach her how to introduce herself in trigedasleng, and parrots it to the village leader with a hesitant smile. The leader, a woman around Indra’s age, takes one look at her, sussing her out, and lets out a chuckle before declaring that the Skaikru need to be fed properly, if they are going to work for them.

Raven doesn’t point out that she’s there to work _with_ them, because diplomacy, and mostly because she gets handed an apple.

Half-way through her fruit, she takes a look at Bellamy, who is sitting closer to Lincoln, more integrated into the group. Far from looking comfortable, Bellamy is staring at the apple, where it rests untouched in his hand.

She doesn’t have to wonder too hard to know why. She’s spent a few weeks just exploring the world with him, and every time they discovered something, whenever they ran into a new plant, or found nuts, or mushrooms, his first thought was always to take some home so Octavia could try it.

Here he is now, being given the first apple he’s seen in his life, and he can’t share it with his family, because he’s chosen to tag along with Raven. She looks down at her own fruit, and discovers that she doesn’t have an appetite for it anymore. Not if it comes like this.

The bench next to Bellamy is empty, so she takes a seat there, and holds out half an apple. She’s taken care to cut the fruit in half, so none of her bite marks remain.

“Here,” she says, “So you can take that one to your sister.”

He looks surprised - what is it with people looking surprised when she tries to be considerate? - and then smiles, looking sheepish to have been caught. “Sorry. You don’t have to - I know that it will rot before we get back, it’s just habit.”

She nods, because it makes sense, and leaves the apple on the table in front of him anyway. “I’m guessing you grew up splitting your rations in half for her?”

“Yeah.”

She can relate to the instinct of burrowing, of stashing food and negotiating rations with yourself. Her habit was for different reasons, but the same at the core: she couldn’t have just let her mother starve. She pats Bellamy’s arm, gentle. “It’s going to be okay. Our rations aren’t limited, as long as we can forage and hunt, and you’ll get the chance to bring them apples one day. I’ll make sure I don’t stick my foot in my mouth and have a diplomatic fuck-up, so we can return?” she tries to joke.

Bellamy just looks at her, for a moment, surprised and quiet. Then he smiles. 

“You’re all heart, aren’t you?” he asks, but not in jest, no trace of sarcasm in his voice; it’s like he _means_ it, and Raven doesn’t know what to say about that. Is she all heart?

“Murmur and all.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s nothing. Eat your apple. You heard the village leader, we better eat well if we’re gonna be working here.”

**8.**

You don’t build a well in a day. You build it in two, if you get help from tall, imposing, muscular Trikru men and women, which is what does happen, once Raven chooses the location for it.

She doesn’t expect the help and enthusiasm, but when she shows the leader the design - it’s elegant, she thinks, and uses natural resources found around them, not metal that they cannot easily find - a handful of people volunteer to pitch in. The well gets dug up by one group, while the pipes and pulley mechanism gets carved out of wood by another, and Raven eventually bullies her way into the second group to work, carving up a hollow in a long cylindrical-shaped piece of wood, because not working with her hands makes her feel like too much of an engineer.

She is met with blank stares when she makes that joke, and in spite of her explanation about what engineers are, nobody recognises her humorous genius.

But they do recognise her design. She can tell that Lincoln and Bellamy are taking notes as she teaches the rest how the construction works, and she knows that Indra sends a scout ahead to the next village with those notes, so they can get started.

All in all, the first time is the hardest. Not because she does it alone, but because she’s allowed to be ambitious. On the second day, before the well is complete, Raven brings a sketch to the village leader and to Indra, of two shower cabins.

“This will take a lot of carving,” says Indra. “A lot more than two days.”

“Yes, but do you want it?” Raven asks, because she can make it work, as long as they agree.

In the end, it’s a whole week before they leave the first village, but when they do, Raven is grinning with satisfaction, her wet hair in a loose braid, her clothes clean. It’s the nicest she’s felt in a while, despite the cold water shower.

**9.**

Each village takes them closer to the lakes, Lincoln says, and at first she doesn’t think anything of it. Each village takes a week of hard work, and the travel in between depends on whether they have horses or not, but it’s usually up to another week every time, counting on all the necessary camping they do.

They leave each village with more people following them, Grounders who declare they want to learn the trade to use it in the future, should anything need repairs or improvement. Raven tries not to feel self-conscious when she has a classroom of people listening to her every word, but the truth is that it’s infectiously good; she’s not used to being this listened to.

By the fourth village, they are a day’s walk from the lake, and once the work is done, the entire envoy decides to camp by its shore and have what Raven can only describe as a bonfire party.

There is food - game and fruit and something that gets called goat cheese - and there is booze, which she takes a polite sip of and then declines for the rest of the night. She has one woman ask why, making a joke about how Trikru hooch is too hard on her little space stomach, so Raven tells her about her mother with all the tact of an elephant in a porcelain shop. They, surprisingly, don’t press her to drink after that.

As the conversations fade out, and the night progresses, she makes her way to the edge of the water, and sits down on the stones. She has already taken her shoes off by the time Bellamy sits down beside her. She rolls her pants up as high as she can, a little awkwardly over the brace, and sticks her feet in the water.

While her brain gets used to the sensations, she looks at Bellamy and finds him looking at her feet. Her legs. Her mouth tastes bitter, and a knot forms in her throat.

“It’s okay, it doesn’t hurt anymore,” she says, out of pure habit. The truth is that it doesn’t, it just doesn’t register any feeling. “Can’t feel anything from the knee below.”

He looks up at her quickly, ready to apologise for prying, but Raven is tired, so she leans her shoulder against his.

“Loosen up, Bellamy, I’m not gonna snap your head off for being curious.”

She doesn’t retain feeling in most of her left leg, and sometimes this numbs the rest of it all the way up to her hip, but when his knuckles brush tentatively against the outside of her upper-thigh, she feels every prickle and tingle that runs up from there to the top of her spine.

“You’re the most beautiful person I’ve met,” Bellamy says, and he stumbles over the words a little, his tongue mellowed by the glass of moonshine he’s had.

“You need to meet more people,” she jokes, trying to ease away the knot that has now moved to her stomach.

“I could meet everyone left alive on Earth and I’d still find you the most beautifulest.”

She lets out a laugh, and nudges his shoulder. “Are you drunk?”

“I’m buzzed. I mean yes. Possibly? I’m sorry, I thought this would help me talk to you, but I heard you talking about your mom, and now I think I might be a total dumbass about this,” he rambles, then takes a deep breath, shifting to face her. “I like you.”

It’s so genuine, and so honest, that she nearly swoons. “I like you, too,” she says, and bites her lower lip to hide a smile.

“Can I… I mean - could I - “

“Not when you smell like that,” she laughs, and leans in to kiss his cheek. “But yeah.”

Something in Bellamy seems to settle, and he relaxes and pulls her closer, one arm around her shoulders, his chin resting on top of her head. “Good. Thank you.”

She’s not doing him a favour here, she wants to point out. But she doesn’t say anything, because her instinct is to answer with _No, thank_ you.

It’s been three months since she reached the ground. She hasn’t thought about Finn in two.


End file.
